This was opened in 1997, as part of our 25 year Campus Plan. It provides a learning environment suitable for the 21st Century, comprising the Senior Library and Information Technology hub for the whole School, as well as various teaching areas.
Students are well served by two libraries: the Haslam Library in the Preparatory School and the Senior Library for Years 8 to 12 students. The libraries are staffed by qualified teacher librarians and share a fully automated library catalogue.
The School library in the Learning and Resource Centre is no longer a place just for the circulation of books. An increase in technology has changed this environment to reflect many new resources and materials. All of the resources provided are carefully selected, balanced and systematically organised in a variety of formats to cater for our extensive curriculum and student diversity. These resources enhance student information literacy skills and allow for all styles of learning at all year levels. One of the key roles of the School library is to develop students’ research skills. They include strategies for identifying, selecting, evaluating, creating and communicating information in all formats.
Using the library home page, students and staff can access a variety of electronic materials. The ‘student help’ section assists students with their assignments and provides essay planners, how to create bibliographies and writing reports amongst other tools. On-line databases can be located through the resources page where students can access a range of electronic media for their research.
There are two trained Teacher Librarians to assist students with their curriculum and research needs.
The library is open from 8.00 am to 5.00 pm each school day. These extended opening hours allow students to work after school in a safe and supportive environment.
The library collections are valued at over AUS$1.3 million. Our total library collection of books, kits, DVDs etc is over 65,000 items. Specifically, the Prep School Haslam Library includes over 5,000 fiction titles, 6,000 non-fiction titles and 3,000 picture books, while the Senior School library has over 4,000 fiction titles and 11,000 non-fiction items. We subscribe to more than 60 journals for staff and students, and many electronic subscriptions are in addition to this number. We circulate over 11,000 items annually.
The School library, encompassing all library precincts of the School, is our physical and virtual learning centre. Literacy, inquiry, thinking, imagination, discovery and creativity are central to students’ information to knowledge journey, which, in turn, contributes to their personal, social and cultural growth.
